Alone with everybody. Part two. Bill defintely wiped away the paint with the cloth and tried once more, this time taking extra care as he dipped the brush before again attempting to correct the line from the upper thigh to the knee. He stood back to get a better look and was immediately disappointed. Damn it, he thought, as he grudgingly wiped the paint away again. Though the week since the house had been exercised in July had been comparatively calm,
the family's financial situation was becoming increasingly desperate. Things appeared to be looking up, however, when Bill was commissioned out of the by his neighbor Susannah, to paint a portrait of her favorite horse, Echo. Bill wasn't entirely sure if it had been out of sympathy or genuine interest, but either way he was grateful not only for the money, but also the chance to finally put his mind at rest and move on from the stress of the previous year.
It was a fairly simple piece to complete by his standards, constructed in two parts, the first being the composition of the backdrop, which Bill had decided on himself after spending the day scouring the local countryside for the perfect setting. With that completed, he had then set about painting in the horse on top, using a recent photograph provided by his neighbor. All was going well until it came to
finishing up the back leg. No matter how many times he tried, the brush just wouldn't do what he wanted. In the end, despite countless efforts, Bill was eventually forced to admit defeat, hoping that his neighbor wouldn't notice. Thankfully, Susannah, who was clearly very fond of the animal, was delighted with his efforts, and so it was with some distress when she informed Bill a few weeks later that Echo
had died. It began soon after Susannah had hung up the painting, watching the horse in the paddock one afternoon, she noticed he was limping and clearly in some considerable pain. A subsequent check up with the vet revealed a peculiar injury to one of its hind legs, which had caused it to swell up inexplicably. Echo's condition deteriorated rapidly over the next few days, until one morning he simply wandered
out into the fields, keeled over and died. Having returned home after burying the animal, a devastated Susannah found herself reminiscing in front of Bill's painting when she noticed something peculiar At the precise spot where the horse had developed his injury. Bill's multiple attempts to get the leg just right had left it looking oddly swollen. Then she noticed something else that sent a sharp chill along her spine. The backdrop that Bill had randomly chosen was the precise
spot where Echo had been found dead. A few nights later, Bill and Liz were woken at home by that familiar sound, like heavy footsteps lumbering about the house. The thing, it seemed, was back in August, it was the turn of Reverend Roy Matthews of the Holy Trinity Church in Abergavenny to try and put an end to the couple's troubles. Arriving with three colleagues, he immediately set about getting a feel for the property, extraordinarily without any prompting from Bill or Liz.
He also came to the unsettling conclusion that a plaintive elderly woman, as well as two young men and one other much darker and distinctly inhuman entity, were haunting their home. The couple were left a little disappointed, however, when the best the reverend could offer was to get together and pray whenever they sensed the atmosphere growing oppressive. Soon after, whilst clearing space in his studio, Bill discovered a photograph
of an elderly woman hidden amongst some old furniture. When he showed it to Liz, her face dropped in astonishment. The woman, who turned out to be Marion Hoben, the landlord's mother and former occupant of heel Fannog, was the same ghostly figure she had been seeing. In December nineteen ninety, the couple's second child, Rebecca, was born, arriving like a spark of fire to illuminate the incessant gloom. But it wasn't long before the darkness was beginning to press in
once more. Shortly after the birth, Liz had just returned to the house after taking the babies for a stroll when she sent something moving across the kitchen doorway, calling out for Bill, she got no ply, despite now clearly seeing the outline of a tall figure hovering just inside the door. Hurriedly, she gathered up the children and whilst keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the figure in the kitchen,
quietly backed out of the house. A few days later, Liz and Bill packed their things and moved into Lizz's mother's house in nearby Cowbridge. The quiet market town of Cowbridge was a welcome respite from the isolation of Hilfanov, and though money was still an issue, with demand for Bill's work struggling to pick up, it wasn't long before they felt a sense of normality being restored for a
short while. At least it was Liz who noticed it first, that sudden familiar fee of being watched, as if a wispy tendril of darkness were reaching out to them from out of the depths of the countryside. One evening, having put the children to bed, Bill, Liz and her mother were just sitting down for dinner when a weird crackle of static came through on the baby monitor. That wasn't static,
thought Liz with horror, it was a voice. Immediately she rushed to the bedroom and switched on the light, but found only her two children fast asleep in their beds. A few days later, having heard all about Lizz's troubles, a neighbor suggested she make contact with local reverend David Holmward, having reached out to him. Holmward arrived at Lizz's mother's home a few days later along with his associate and
Anita to discuss the couple's predicament. By the time he left at two am, he was in no doubt as to the source of their affliction. It was simple, he told them, you are being stalked by demons. That night, as David and Anita drove home through the narrow, winding country roads, something shot toward them from out of the dark and smashed into the windscreen with a mighty crack. The pair screamed as David slammed on the brakes and brought the car to a shuddering stop by the side
of the road. Catching their breath, they looked up to find the shattered windscreen covered in blood. Cautiously, David stepped out into the road, and there, illuminated by the glare of the headlights, he found the twitching body of a dead owl. The message was clear, he thought, stay away
from the house. It was two weeks later that David and Anita were back on the road, keeping their eyes fixed on Bill's car up ahead as he led them through the winding country lanes toward their destination under the shadowed edges of the Northern Beacons. But as they turned a corner, David was gripped by a sudden pang of anxiety, as if something were pushing down hard on his chest. Anita could only watch in terror as he struggled to keep control of the vehicle, before finally bringing it to
a skidding stop by the side of the road. Immediately, David reached out for Anita's hand, and there they sat, repeating the Lord's prayer over and over until they were certain a disturbance had been left. Moments later, they pulled into the driveway of hiel Fannock. The plan was simple to get in and out as quickly as possible, confiscating anything that could be serving as a conduit for the
demonic forces which David believed were plaguing the home. From incense burners to books on the paranormal and Buddhism, all of it was thrown into a box and taken out to the car. Upsettingly, for Bill, it was largely his own artwork that was of most concern to the evangelists. It was this, above all else that David believed to be empowering whatever demons were stalking the family. Bill could only watch with dismay as one offending article after another
was removed and promptly escorted from the house. But what will you do with all, he asked, We will burn it, of course, came David's prompt reply. The following morning, with the help of his son, David dug a shallow pit in his garden into which all the tainted items were dumped, covered in lighter fluid, and set on fire. The pair watched as the flames jumped and licked ever higher, spitting
and crackling as the fire feasted on the myriad items. Then, slowly, David became aware of another sound, seeming to emanate from deep within the flames, a hideous screeching sound, as if something inside the fire were being burned alive, but it would all be in vain. Despite his best efforts, David's attempted exorcism would ultimately prove ineffective when only a few
weeks later the hauntings returned with a vengeance. Unable to afford a move away and with all avenues seemingly exhausted, Bill and Liz had no choice but to try and learn to live with it all. And so they did, doing all they could to ignore the disembodied footsteps and
strange spectral visions. As ever, Bill sought solace in his painting, and with one painting in particular, with which he was becoming increasingly immersed, a peculiar canvas of past all colors and tubulus strands that seemed to wrap and snake around themselves. It was like nothing he had painted before. But such endeavors only ever provided fleeting moments of comfort, and by the end of nineteen ninety three they had all but
given up hope of ever escaping their horrifying ordeal. Little could they have known then that help was just around the corner. Are you always taking care of your family? Do you often take care of others and not yourself? Now it's time to take care of yourself, to make time for you. You deserve it. Tele adoc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your best, to feeling like yourself again. With tele adoc, you can speak to a licensed therapist by
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available through most insurance or employers. Download the app or visit teledoc dot com forward slash Unexplained podcast today to get started. That's teladoc dot com slash Unexplained podcast. Film producer Annie McDonald had been wrestling with a documentary idea for some time regarding the exploits of apparent psychic and
self styled ghost hunter Eddie Burkes. Back in August nineteen ninety two, Burkes had achieved some notoriety after he claimed to have successfully banished the ghost of a sixteenth century courtier from the offices of the exclusive British banking institution COOTS. Incredibly, not only had Burkes been invited to local the ghost by representatives of the bank itself, but they had also attested to his success in removing it from their offices.
When McDonald who also lived near the Breckham Beacons, heard about the peculiar goings on at Joel Fannock. She wasted little time in contacting listened Bill with a proposition she would set them up with Burks if they agreed to let her film his process. Though the couple were reticent at the thought of letting a documentary crew into their home,
they also knew they had nothing to lose. It was difficult to know quite what to make of the slight, bespectacled Burks when he first arrived that early March afternoon, dressed unassumingly in his dark green anorak. Nonetheless, Lizz and Bill tried to remain optimistic as they invited him, along with his friend and writer Julian Cribbs, as well as McDonald and her production into their home. Moments later, with everyone gathered around the kitchen table, Liz and Bill filled
them in on all that had happened so far. The tiredness and distress etched across the couple's faces as they talked showed just how difficult the last few years had been. While behind them, long triangular strips of wallpaper hanging limply from the wall gave the impression that even the house itself was starting to crumble from the strain. When Liz finally brought their account to an end, Burkes became suddenly distracted and asked to be taken outside to inspect the
ruins of the old manor house. With the camera operator following close behind, the group made their way into the garden through a line of trees and onto the crumbling ruins behind. Strangely, when they arrived, much to the operator's dismay, the camera completely shut down. The battery, despite having been almost fully charged only minutes before, had gone completely flat.
A second camera operated by McDonald appeared unaffected as she kept it steady on Burks while he requested quiet from everyone, and then promptly fell into a trance. When McDonald had first traveled to meet Burks not long after she first informed him of the situation at Lisabelle's home, he had also entered a trance. When he came out of it, he explained that he had been communicating with a young man whose soul he said was trapped at hiel Fannock.
The man had apparently described the experience to him as like being caught in a thicket that conspired to entrap him every time he tried to escape. The young man had apparently also told Burkes that he had been murdered sometime in the nineteenth century by a sickening blow to the back of the head. Back in the garden. Burkes's voice broke the silence. The young man was with them now,
he said, and was trying to tell him something. This was the place, he was saying, where he had seen something he shouldn't have, the very thing that had cost him his life. As Burkes went on to detail more about the boy's murder, Gillian noticed a look of recognition spreading across Liz's face. As Liz explained later, during the second year of their stay at the house, she had learned about the brutal murder of a young farm hand that occurred in the mid nineteenth century within walking distance
of Heolfanock. All this time she had wandered if it had anything to do with the strange activity in their home. Could it be she thought that this was the young man that Burke's had been communicating with. It was a cold and misty morning in November eighteen forty eight at Coombe Goody Farm, a kilometer away from what would later become heol Fannock. When farm servant Elizabeth Phillips rose just before dawn and made her way to a nearby brook
to fetch some water. Approaching the entry gate to the yard, she was surprised to find seventeen year old farm hand James Griffiths suddenly appear from out of the dark with an odd grin on his After muttering a brief good morning, he headed off toward the farmhouse, leaving Elizabeth to fetch the water on her own. When she returned via the gate a few minutes later, she was startled by a strange moaning sound that seemed to rise out of nowhere.
In terror, she hurried back to the house and called out for James to help her find the source of the noise. When Elizabeth heard it again, coming from somewhere toward the back of the yard, she asked James to stay put while she went to fetch a torch. By the time she returned, however, James had disappeared after failing
to find a source for the noise. It wasn't until much later in the day that Elizabeth caught sight of something lying underneath a dunkeep that caused her to cry out in horror of legs lying in a pool of blood. Having been roused by Elizabeth's screams, farmer John Powell and his son rushed to her aid. Together they pulled the body from the heap to find it was in fact another of their farm hands, the eighteen year old Thomas Edwards. Remarkably,
the young man was still alive. Remarkable because on picking him up to carry him inside, they discovered a four inch wide hole in the back of his head, bleeding profusely, and beneath him clearly visible on the ground the missing pieces of his skull. Thomas clung on for a number of hours in a state of severe confusion, before eventually succumbing to his injuries. Just as Eddie Burkes had claimed, the unfortunate man had been killed by a sickening to
the back of his head. Four months later, James Griffiths, who also went by the name of Thomas Williams, was arrested in Ipswich, some three hundred miles away, still wearing clothes that he had stolen from Thomas Edwards. Griffiths eventually confessed that he had murdered Edwards to steal what little
money he had in his possession. It was Eddie Burkes's belief, however, that Edwards had in fact stumbled upon some kind of Satanic ritual and was murdered by Griffiths, acting under the instructions of someone unknown to protect the identities of those who had been seen. However, no evidence has ever been found to support this theory, although curiously not that it suggests anything to do with the greatly misunderstood practice of Satanism.
When Griffiths first confessed committing the murder, he also claimed that a woman named Jane Morgan had been the cause of it. This name was later retracted from his confession. Once convicted of his crime, Griffiths, who had been abandoned by his family at a young age and spent most of his teenage life drifting from one job to another, was sentenced to death by hanging on Wednesday, eighteenth April
eighteen forty nine. The by then eighteen years old James Griffiths was marched to the gallows at Brecon County Jail in front of a large crowd of onlookers and hung from his neck until death, with liers concluding the tragic tale of the farm Hands. Something striking occurred to the group. Could it be that perhaps the spirits of those two young men were the same spirit that the couple had been told on two separate occasions were trapped in the property,
with the landlord's mother possibly accounting for the third. That left only the fourth in human entity unaccounted for. With the group back in the kitchen, the quiet Burke's took a seat at the table. After confirming that the spirit of the young man he had been communicating with had now moved on, he closed his eyes and fell into
another trance. Opening them again, Burke was drawn immediately to the spot near the bathroom close to the bottom of the stairs, sensing a strange darkness was being harbored there, but there was also something else. He closed his eyes again. He could see a vision, he said out loud. A bright cross was manifesting, bringing light into the house. Something holy, he said. Bill got up immediately from the table and appeared a moment later holding a large canvas painting. Burkes
opened his eyes and looked up. Though the background was an abstract mesh of dark colors and thick brushstrokes, the large white cross in the middle was unmistakable. It was just as Burkes had described. Yes, he said quietly, that is what's been keeping you safe. Bill had painted the White Cross three years previously, over the course of a few nights, the imagery having come to him completely out
of the blue. One evening, Burkes's friend Gillian was instantly intrigued to know what else Bill might have unconsciously channeled, and asked to see the studio. In amongst what Gillian later described as a collection of landscapes and pop art studies, there was one painting that stood out against the rest, a strange and puzzling picture, unlike anything else in the room, comprised of a vast, pastel colored mesh of tubular, tendril
like things linked together in a bizarre organic circuitry. Looking closer, Gillian noticed they were in fact vines, complete with sharp thorns, and in amongst them were what looked like internal organs, outstretched hands, and even the occasional face peering out with pained expressions as if they were screaming. Gillian was instantly reminded of Eddie Burkes's first conversation with producer Annie McDonald. Was this, she thought, not a depiction of the imprisoned soul?
As had apparently been described to Burkes by the spirit of the deceased young man, had he been calling out to Bill for help all this time. Although a possible identity to the apparent fourth in human presence was never ascertained, Burkes was adamant he had done enough to exercise whatever
it had been from Liz and Bill's home. In the immediate aftermath of his trip to the house, once again the family felt a renewed likeness, and though they experienced a few subsequent troubles with Burke's returning in June to conduct a further exorcism, his intervention appeared to have done the trick. That following day after Burkes's second visit, the rate of electricity usage dropped the first time since they
had lived in the house. By nineteen ninety five, the family experienced no further hauntings, and Bill's work was starting to pick up again. As for film producer Annie McDonald, she never did quite get her film of Burke's in action, with the battery of one camera having inexplicably died as Burke's attempted communication with the spirits, McDonald's second camera appeared to be capturing it all fine It was only when she returned home later, however, that she had a chance
to review the footage. Switching on the camera, she ran the tape forward to the point where the group made their way to the back of the garden, impressed play with great anticipation, she watched as Burke's positioned himself by the ruins and asked for silence. Then, just at the moment of apparent contact, the screen went blank. She fast forwarded in desperation, but it was to no avail. The
rest of the tape was completely empty. If you enjoy listening to Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you can now go to Unexplained podcast dot com forward slash support. All donations, no matter how large or small, are massively appreciated. All elements of Unexplained are produced by me, Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe, I rate the show on iTunes. Feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have
an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or on Twitter at Unexplained Pod. Now it's time to take care of yourself to make time for you. Teledoc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your best. Speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video anytime between seven am to nine pm local time, seven days a week. Teledoc Therapy is
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